beatles stuff found

January 11, 2003 6:52 PM

Bunches and bunches of lost/stolen Beatles tapes recovered by cops. The fab 4 were My Era but I'm no particular fan of 'em, prefering the Byrds for hippie-dippie flashback, the Beach Boys for that let's-fire-up-the-Lincoln-SUV-and-burn-rubber mood, the post-Brian-fries-his-brain Beach Boys again for acid nostalgia and (fuller tips hat to the Dark Side) little Frankie Zappa, of whom I bought Freak Out as a $1.98 loss leader in 1966 and everything since, up through and including Läther . Nevertheless, this looks like it might be fun.
posted by jfuller (28 comments total)

Wow, praise with a faint damn, why don't you.
posted by jonmc at 6:56 PM on January 11, 2003

Great. Now watch them "discover" that there's a couple dozen tapes in there with John Lennon and Tupac in the studio together.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:23 PM on January 11, 2003

Damn faint. Everything else you mention pales beside the Beatles, and each of them would acknowledge that (well, maybe not Zappa, because he certainly had other influences, but he wouldn't dis them like that).

Anyway, what was found was the "Get Back" sessions that were deemed too bad (by both the Beatles themselves and by Phil Spector, who went in to wade through the crap to cobble together the album "Let It Be") to even try to use on either of the two LPs that came from the sessions, so I doubt that there will be much of musical interest, unless you like hearing wealthy, cranky Liverpudlians yell at each other.
posted by yhbc at 7:36 PM on January 11, 2003

> Damn faint. Everything else you mention pales beside the Beatles,

> unless you like hearing wealthy, cranky Liverpudlians yell at
> each other.

Got this love-hate relationship, do you?
posted by jfuller at 8:01 PM on January 11, 2003

Well ... yeah. The Beatles experience includes a lot of great stuff and much that pretty well defined popular music for the past four decades, as well as a lot of crap. Listen to "12-bar Original". Hell, listen to "Flying", and then fast-forward to "Blue Jay Way". This was all bad stuff, as was most of what they did, cooped up together trying to "get back" in the studio during the sessions at hand.

I love the Beatles, and recognize them for what they are, but I'm not so taken to think that everything each and every one of them squeezed from between their cheeks smelled of roses. I don't think that's necessarily a "love-hate relationship".
posted by yhbc at 8:16 PM on January 11, 2003

No Pakistanis? Wow had no clue that Get Back was about immigration.

/me eagerly awaits Paul, and Ringo to release these tapes
posted by riffola at 8:28 PM on January 11, 2003

Not a new revelation, riffola. For decades, it's been known that one of the stanzas of "Get Back" once went don't dig no Pakistanis takin' all the peoples jobs, get back to where you once belonged. Of course, Paul changed it, much like he changed "Scrambled Egg" to "Yesterday".

For further information, see The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn
posted by yhbc at 9:10 PM on January 11, 2003

Damn bug music.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:19 PM on January 11, 2003

You force my hand, stav.

In fact, the "bug" pun predated the name "Beatles", since John Lennon named the band after a pre-existing "bug" band: Buddy Holly's Crickets. He and the rest of the band later claimed it had a secondary meaning; i.e., the "beat" of the music, but there are photos of the band as the "Silver Beetles" without an "a" in the name.

All those bad jokes all those years, and they in fact are closer to the truth.
posted by yhbc at 9:37 PM on January 11, 2003

The Beatles were such good commercial jingle writers. Where would the advertising industry be without them?
posted by stavrogin at 10:14 PM on January 11, 2003

jfuller, I have to shout out to a fellow Byrds fan. And in fact, one of my favorite new music links owes a tip of the hat to mr. yhbc here who had a thread about McGuinn's Folk Den Archive not too long ago.
posted by madamjujujive at 10:50 PM on January 11, 2003

Strangely enough, I just heard a (real good) song called "Rockin' Crickets" by the Hot Toddy's. There's bugs and music, in the air folks..
posted by jonmc at 11:15 PM on January 11, 2003

There's at least one example of Frank Zappa being influenced by The Beatles. (OK, maybe it's a parody. Wait, it's Frank Zappa, of course it's a parody.)

Sidetrack: OK, Byrds fans, as a big R.E.M. fan I always heard that The Byrds were a big influence on R.E.M., but I don't hear it, other than the Rickenbackers. What am I missing?
posted by kirkaracha at 11:18 PM on January 11, 2003

My era too, and I didn't care for them much at the time. I thought everyone got stupid when they arrived. I was just getting into dixieland jazz (via my dad) at the time and didn't see what the big deal was with them. I appreciate them now but it's as much for nostalgia as anything else.

My slightly older brother was great at picking out undiscovered groups from the discount piles and brought home Freak Out one day. We wore that sucker out. Now THAT was eye opening stuff at the time.
posted by HTuttle at 11:33 PM on January 11, 2003

I'm pleased to hear this news. the Beatles have been a part of the fabric of my life. Listening to them reminds me me of Saturday mornings before my parents awoke - listening to Rubber Soul with my sister - alternating earphones with each track. I was always proud that I, being younger, could tell George and John apart on the 'With the beatles' covers. That was when I was 6. I've been listening to them ever since. My son, now two, sings along with a few of the Beatles early hits.

Having said all this, I wouldn't lable me a Beatles fan. I don't have books or collectables. I don't even have all of their albums - mostly just the recent new discs from the BBC to 1. I've just been listening to George Harrison's final album, and I'll probably buy it when my money's a bit looser in my pocket. Still - the music has always been part of my life and like a long time friend - I will always be willing to enjoy their music - good or bad.
posted by DragonBoy at 11:38 PM on January 11, 2003

You force my hand, stav.

Actually, I was just non-sequiteur quoting an old injoke I had with a buddy of mine who was a big Beatles fan, which I think had its genesis from an episode of the Flintstones....but the info is welcome! Thanks, commish.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:47 PM on January 11, 2003

Beach Boys give you that fire-up-the-SUV feeling? Why? "Little Old Lady from Pasadena"? "My Little Blue Coupe"? "Fun Fun Fun (Til Her Daddy Takes the T-Bird Away)"?

Why not "Surfin' USA", "California Girls", "Good Vibrations", "In My Room", "My Favorite Vegetable." More people think of those songs first!
posted by rschram at 9:34 AM on January 12, 2003

Re: "No Pakistanis," in case anyone's in doubt -- it's satire. And it hasn't only been known about for decades, it's been available on boots for decades. (I picked it up on the "Sweet Apple Trax" boot in the mid-70s.) Needless to say, "White Power" is also satire. The references to Enoch Powell were derogatory.
posted by macrone at 4:42 PM on January 12, 2003

macrone: Agreed. That wasn't clear from my earlier statements; thank you for making the point clearer.

Now, whether you could count John "in" or "out" when you talk about destruction remains to be debated ...
posted by yhbc at 5:08 PM on January 12, 2003

im glad that you took the oppurtunity to explain to us that you dont like the beatles and do like the byrds and brian wilson. thanks man! thats so amazing! you suck.
posted by Satapher at 5:19 PM on January 12, 2003

and most of the Smiley Smile songs were written while he was frying his brain, not post.
posted by Satapher at 5:24 PM on January 12, 2003

and the walrus was Paul, right?
posted by Vidiot at 5:36 PM on January 12, 2003

Then there was the endless speculation over the identity of "Leslie" in the Rascals "Groovin' "

You And Me and Leslie/groovin'...

According to a radio interview with Felix Caviliere, he's actually singing "endlessly."

Seems obvious now.
posted by jonmc at 6:20 PM on January 12, 2003

'Scuse me while I kiss this guy...
posted by Vidiot at 6:25 PM on January 12, 2003

"I could be the walrus, but I'd still have to bum rides off people." - Ferris Bueller.
posted by ZachsMind at 6:29 PM on January 12, 2003

I don't believe in Beatles. I just believe in me.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:34 PM on January 12, 2003

Do any of these "lost tapes" contain any material that is not already available on bootlegs? It doesn't sound like it, and what with the comprehensive archive of bootleg material from the Get Back sessions (ranging from the audio off the video cameras at Twickenham studio when they were trying to film themselves making the album, to all the Apple studio takes thereafter). If not - the only thing gained out of the "recovery" of these tapes would be cleaner versions of the same material (they're supposedly the "master copies") that has been available on various bootlegs (of varying quality) since the 70s... as such, its really less of a deal than they make out to be.

Nonetheless... it would be nice to have optimal quality recordings of this material made available.
posted by aki at 6:57 PM on January 12, 2003

"I'm not saying that we're better or greater, or comparing us with mr_crash_davis as a person or mathowie as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this."
posted by yhbc at 7:12 PM on January 12, 2003